


Memorial

by Monstrosibee



Series: In Our Room, After The War [3]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Canon, Temporary Character Death, post-post apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:28:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27260500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monstrosibee/pseuds/Monstrosibee
Summary: The business of arranging a funeral is hard when the world has just stopped being ended, and the one Martin is arranging it for has left no body.
Relationships: Jonathan Sims/Martin Blackwood
Series: In Our Room, After The War [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2126724
Comments: 5
Kudos: 90





	Memorial

It was hot enough for Martin to sweat beneath the old rumpled fabric of his rented suit in the only sunny corner of the cemetery that morning. Too early in the year, he thought, to be quite that warm, or for there to be as many wildflowers sprouting along the outside edge of the fence just beyond the final line of headstones. He had even seen a few of the kids from the nearby neighborhood skipping rope in shorts and t-shirts, their bare feet seemingly none too bothered by the chilly sunrise that had preceded the coming daytime warmth.

A lot had shifted to the left, just a little bit, since Jonathan Sims had saved the world, though. The weather wouldn’t be the oddest among them.

The funeral director at the head of the crowd paused where she was reviewing something in a little notebook as another face Martin didn’t recognize wandered down the pathway that cut through through the main aisle of the cemetery, then scribbled down something as the newcomer drifted towards their particular headstone. She’d been a busybody the entire time he’d been organizing the funeral - or memorial service, as there hadn’t been anything resembling remains to bury - and while it had grated on him then, now it was just another thing happening in a long list of things that had been Happening. He supposed being attentive was a sought after trait in the business of funeral affairs, but the constant forced sympathy and probing questions had started to pick at his already very frayed nerves.

Turning away from where she bustled forward to greet the new guests, Martin tucked his hands into the pockets of his pants, one of them going to silence his vibrating cellphone as he did so. Probably just Rosie calling to say there were more letters asking about this, that, or the other person that maybe the Institute had encountered. He didn’t want to know if there were right now, the mountain they still had to sort through already weighing heavy on his mind. The senders of course demanded answers, wanted to know more about the collective fever dream the human race had experienced, or where their missing loved ones were, but even if he could have answered all of them himself, Martin doubted it would bring them any peace. It hadn’t brought him any, when he’d finally accepted that Jonathan Sims was dead.

Grief needled the backs of his eyeballs again at the thought, but he just glared down at the name and dates on the headstone, almost angry at its current non-occupant.  
He’d only taken up the task of being one of the few former employees to help reorganize and clean up the disaster that was now the Magnus Institute because it gave him something to keep his mind off those last fleeting horrifying moments of the apocalypse, the ones that haunted the night terrors that left him thrashing and screaming from the mere remembered sensation of it. Now that he was finally here, looking down on Jon’s empty grave, though, the past six weeks of work seemed more like a waste of time and effort than a worthy endeavor; a way to procrastinate on a reality he really didn’t want to acknowledge. 

Martin had arranged the funeral, had paid out of pocket for the plot and gravestone. He’d had enough, from those long months spent under Peter’s thumb eating nothing but the bare minimum and remaining isolated in his tiny flat. It was plain, because even with the saved amount he couldn’t afford much more, and the few family members he managed to get in contact with were distant and uninterested in helping. He hadn’t pushed.  
And he hadn’t planned much of a ceremony either, as Jon had never expressed an interest in religion, and there hadn’t been many people who would come. Those assembled in the slightly too long grass that morning were the dregs of former Magnus employees, a few neighbors, the kind old lady from the library that Jon had frequented who had known him by his first name. Georgie Barker stood at the edge of the crowd with Melanie, the look on her face almost like she was confused why this was happening at all. 

Martin didn’t agree with all her opinions on how Jon had handled those last few years, but he thought that she knew in the end it wasn’t a choice. That it should’ve happened to someone less earnest and open and easily attached than Jonathan Sims.  
From the corner of his eye, Martin could see the funeral director prowling through the small crowd towards him, and he suppressed a world weary sigh, turning to face her before she could catch him off guard. “Mrs. Hooper, it’s about eleven. If you have somewhere else to be, I was planning on just letting a few friends share words.”

Her creased face was folded in the same patronizing gentle smile as always, and he had to choke back a grimace as she placed a hand on his arm. “Mr. Blackwood, I wouldn’t want to rush you through your time of grieving. The next funeral today isn’t until noon, so stay as long as you like. If you need anything, you have my number, and my assistant Marshall is in the building as well.”

Stiff and wanting for all in the world to get away from this woman, Martin nodded, awkwardly patting her hand. “I will be sure to...to look for you. If I need anything, I mean. Thank you.”

She gave him a few final condolences and then left, trotting down the path in the self assured way of someone going about business, and not someone leaving a funeral. He couldn’t help the grimace now, but he managed to obscure it from most of the guests by turning to the small podium that had been left for them, to give the service just a slight bit more formality than the average funeral of an eight year old’s pet hamster. It wobbled in the uneven grass as Martin placed a hand upon it, but his movements near the front were enough to get the crowd’s attention; most of the soft chatter faded away to silence, and the remaining few talking were hushed by their neighbors. 

“Thank you for coming, everyone.” The lump in his throat was dry as ever as he spoke, feeling small despite his six feet and four inches. “I know it’s not much, but I appreciate your presence and I’m sure he would as well. I...Well, I don’t have much of a service planned, but before I say anything further, I was going to open the podium to anyone who wanted to say a few words. Nothing is too small, and it doesn’t matter how well you knew Jon, you’re welcome to say it here.”

Georgie surprised him by surging forward from the back of the huddled guests, nearly sprinting to get to Martin, her black skirt rustling loudly against some of the taller grass. Martin quickly shuffled to the side as he saw how too-bright her eyes were, the black eyeshadow making it all the more obvious she had been crying. The expression now though was furious, her whole face crumpled in the kind of wrath that frightened even the bravest soul.

“Jonathan Sims did a lot of things badly in his life.” Her voice rang like a church bell where Martin’s had sounded to his own ears like a spineless plea, a lonely request to not be alone in his grief. “He was bad at making new friends, I don’t think he took more than two calculative math classes in his entire college career, and I once saw him parallel park so poorly I took his keys and fixed it for him so he wouldn’t get a parking ticket. He could be stern and stiff and liked to swan around reciting theater lines like he was Shakespeare’s greatest actor. I think his personality in our first year of uni was the actual reason they coined the word pretentious.” 

Despite himself, Martin couldn’t help but smile softly to himself.. All of those things were definitely good descriptors of Jon. She pushed on, her tone evening out to something a little more sorrowful than humorous. “But he always wanted to do the right thing. He was a student tutor for a while in our final year in uni, and sometimes I’d find him slumped over some book, trying to learn the content his current assignment was studying because he wasn’t a perfect expert on everything and it had affected how well he was advising them. He was really good at crane games and he’d always play when we went down to the corner store and then give the thing to the first kid he could find, claiming it was just to show off his skills.”

Here her tone shifted again, too big and fuzzy around the edges like a bird fluffing up its feathers to face the cold. “And he tried so desperately to keep his friends safe, in those last years. I was so mad at him for so long, for being so cagey about it and bringing Melanie into it and doing it to HIMSELF...I guess I didn’t realize how much of it wasn’t a real choice. We’ve been broken up for years now but I still considered him one of my best friends, because he was. Because he cared so much. And I think the world is a worse place with him gone, even if we all know just how bad a world it could’ve been.”

With Georgie’s graceful broadcaster voice gone, silence poured back into the vacuum as Martin retook the podium. He quickly found himself giving it up to other people though; one of their old coworkers from artifact storage spoke about a time where Jon had managed to pull him away from the Lonely just by asking if everything really was alright, a neighbor detailed the weeks where he was laid up from surgery when Jon brought groceries by three times a week for a month, the old librarian gave a surprisingly detail survey of his taste in fiction. It was more than he had anticipated, and each little vignette both warmed him all over and made him very cold as they were told. 

When no one else approached to speak, Martin glanced out over them and nodded, moving to once again stand behind the rickety pressed wood. He’d had many grand thoughts for this - a poem artfully written and crafted with love, something from one of Jon’s favorite theater pieces, some quote about the nature of love and how it affected you. 

“I loved Jonathan Sims.” It was the only thing his grief addled brain could spit out at that first moment, and then he took a watery shaky breath. “I loved Jonathan Sims until the end. I’m sure many of you know how that end went, but I don’t really want to talk about that. He isn’t going to just be known as some...some great savior that died for everyone because he felt guilty. I think that’s kind of a lazy rubbish way to describe him, because he was more than what other people made him be.

“When we first met, I was covered in mud and chasing a dog through his archives and thoroughly terrified of this man who was now my boss - whom I lied to on my CV, I’ll let you all in on that one - disapproving of and firing me. We didn’t - well, we didn’t meet on the greatest of terms. He was kind of an arse about my work and of course I was pretty infatuated with this skeptical academic with an aura of knowing more than everyone else about him.

“I think it changed from an admittedly pointless crush to love when he asked me if I were a ghost.”

Martin shared his smile with the crowd as they all tittered at that. “We were down hiding from the worms during the Prentiss incident, and he was so so scared and I almost started crying from laughter it was so ridiculous, my esteemed archivist boss with a degree and a stupid professor’s elbow patch jacket asking if I was a ghost. But I think what got me was that he sounded so...so earnest. 

The words in his head vibrated against the sides of his skull like bees trapped in a glass jar, sending his vision blurry with tears as he spoke his next words. “He honestly wanted to know. He was scared, but later he told me he also wanted to, well wanted to help me move on if I was a ghost. That a ghost was a very lonely thing to be and that maybe, maybe if they couldn’t resolve the Prentiss problem at that moment, he could at least fix MY problem.

Fingers fisted against the podium, and Martin Blackwood fought to keep his voice still and strong even as a sob tried to crawl from his lungs. “And that was his biggest strength, and biggest flaw. When he saw a problem, he wanted to fix it, whether it be to his benefit or not. I don’t think he necessarily set out to help people, but when something was wrong, it was like an itch that he couldn’t scratch. He had to find the solution. He was like that for the months leading up to the whole apocalypse thing. With me, I mean. He wanted to fix what was wrong with me, that sad, cold look I’d have when he managed to catch me in the hallway. For a long time, I just thought it was because of his need to fix things, not for any innate feelings he had towards me.”

By now, the words wouldn’t stop, as though the Archivist himself had looked him in the eye and asked him a question. It was like they poured straight from his brain to his mouth, no filter in between. “I asked him later when he’d realized how he’d felt about me and he seemed...unsure. I think that’s just how it was with him. He’d let all those feelings pile up without feeling them until they all happened at once, and then he’d do stupid stuff like jump into an endless foggy void to save someone who hadn’t spoken more than a few paragraphs to him in months.

“I miss him.”

The last three words, though simple, came from a letter the Institute had gotten in the first few weeks after the world had been righted from some park ranger in the United States. It had been asking after the infamous Gerard Keay of statement fame - though only with the first name it seemed - and whether he’d been through the Institute since the apocalypse had ended. Most of it was clipped stuff about trying to find him after everything went wrong, but the last few lines had struck Martin. “He’s done a lot for me, and I never got to thank him for it. I wanted him to know that he was appreciated just for being there for me, though.” Then, crossed out under that, “I miss him.”

Something about it, the simple expression of gratitude and longing...he felt it now, as they closed the service, and he offered to show them all to the Institute down the street where he’d set up one of the now forever empty meeting rooms for a reception. He hadn’t been able to afford renting somewhere for it, but Bassira, who had taken to helping organize the archives with ravenous fervor, had pushed Martin into accepting the meeting room for the purpose. He suspected it was in part to make up for not coming to the service, which he knew she felt unfit for after the way she had treated Jon after all that had happened and how she hadn’t been able to save Daisy, but he didn’t really feel it in him to be upset with her about it.

Despite the state the rest of the Institute was in, the meeting room was impeccable, with chairs along the sides and a small buffet sort of line of potluck casserole dishes. There was plenty of room for the fifteen or so people who had come, and muted conversations were exchanged between guests as they all ate from paper plates. Martin spoke to a few of the guests who came to greet him and offer condolences, and even took a sympathy card from the librarian, who had somehow gone out of her way to find his name and write it in neat handwriting on the envelope.

In no short order, though, it quickly overwhelmed him. He was the grieving partner, after all, and that meant pitying glances and sympathetic pats to the shoulder that he just couldn’t stomach. It was only a half hour in when he slipped out with the excuse of using the restroom and wandered down the hallway to catch his breath in another meeting room. 

This one was filled with now defunct artifacts from storage that needed to be recategorized as safe, stacked floor to ceiling with seemingly unrelated objects. When Jon had grabbed the fold in the world and twisted, he hadn’t killed the entities, but returned them to something that was more fitting, scavengers of fear already extant, instead of bloated monstrosities fed by the devotion of servants that had grown them to a size that was already collapsing under its own weight. It had rendered many of their tools useless without the power to back them, and so they were now part of former artifact storage.

Pushing aside several boxes of teapots and an oversized vase, Martin dropped to sit on the wooden crate underneath them, wincing at the creak it made. It was probably older than him, but he couldn’t find it in himself to get back up now that he was down. After the frantic energy of earlier, he was drained, tired of having to experience emotions one after the other. 

This service had really been the last big landmark of getting back to normal that Martin had planned, or as normal as things could be without Jon. Now he was looking ahead and he couldn’t fathom just...finding another low qualification job and working himself until he died alone. Sure, Georgie and Melanie had stayed in contact, and after the lawyers figured out what the Institute actually owed all of Jonah’s victims, he might have money to go to school, but he didn’t really want to. He didn’t really want to do anything.

Thumpf. His heart nearly jumped into his throat as something in the crate under him moved, and the rush of adrenaline was enough to get him off the crate and then some. With a horrific prickling at the back of his neck, he realized he hadn’t been seated on a crate, but on the Choke coffin, the sinister container that had nearly eaten Jon when he’d went after Daisy all that time ago. The thumpf happened again, and this time Martin could see the lid actually move with the force of it.  
When they’d found it in artifact storage again after the world had woken up, the lid had been open and the dirt was only a thin layer of sandy soil in the bottom that couldn’t even cover his hand completely. There was no moaning of people lost in the dark depths, no hungering vacuum sucking anyone in. For all intents and purposes, the reduction of the Buried had reduced this as well to a normal coffin. He hadn’t felt the need to lock it again as it didn’t seem to be a real artifact anymore.  
So he wasn’t ashamed to say he shrieked when something threw the coffin lid open and crawled out, grimy and muddy and barely recognizable as a person.

Whatever or whoever it was dropped to the floor almost immediately upon setting foot there, then reached mud and dirt covered hands up to wipe away from eyes. Martin scrambled away, finding the grip of a nearby broom that may or may not have killed someone at some point to wield in front of him like a weapon. “Don’t move!” he shouted. “I’m...I’m armed!”

The figure hesitated for a second, eyes still largely obscured by clods of dirt hanging in what Martin realized was long hair around their face. They reached a hand out to him, then stopped as he brandished the broom like a lance, and glanced around. Coughing dirt and dust out like an old car hacking up smoke, they mumbled, so hoarse as to be almost inaudible, “Give me a second, let me just…”

Several more small piles of dust and dirt were hacked out, then the figure started scrubbing at their face, peeling away layers of compost and mud and crusted on silt. They revealed both their eyes finally...and then more eyes, eight in all, three smaller arrayed at the corners of each main eye, like little green marbles. Those two eyes, though, were bright as miniature suns, the rich warm brown of polished oak that reflected Martin’s own stunned face back to him as he dropped the broom and stumbled forward.

“How long has it been?” asked the muddy and still unsteady Jonathan Sims as he was enveloped in the tightest loudest crying hug he had ever received. He rushed to return it with the same amount of force that Martin was currently offering, but his eyes darted around wildly as he did so. “I’m at the real Institute, right? You’re the real Martin? Did we stop it?”

Martin couldn’t bring himself to speak through the blubbering as he scrabbled to brush away the rest of the mud and dirt caked onto Jon’s face and into his beard. He could see the marks where the worms had dug holes into him, see the scar across his throat, see the single line from childhood at the corner of his jaw where he’d fallen on the pavement and split the skin. And as Jon’s eyes finally came into focus, true focus, and he saw Martin in return, he croaked out a single almost hysterical, “HA!”

Dirty hands slapped to Martin’s cheeks and suddenly he was tasting dirt as Jon was kissing him. It lasted only a second before Jon backed away and yelled, “HA!” again in that same slightly crazed manner and then dove back in for another kiss. This one lasted longer and the grubby hands encircled Martin’s shoulders instead as he leaned down and Jon leaned up. Jon was rubbing mud all over the rented suit and somehow Martin found he didn’t care, didn’t care except for that one narrow point in space where they were touching and his fragile fantasy of having his dead boyfriend back and in his arms was reality. 

After what felt like hours but was probably only a minute or two, they broke contact again and both hurriedly tried to speak at once. Both went silent, and then Jon jumped on that silence. “How long has it been? Were you looking for me long? Oh, I hope my spiderplant hasn’t died, that things survived for years!” He frowned, finally taking in Martin’s appearance and the suit. “Why on Earth are you wearing a suit?”

He had to resist dragging his hands down his face, choosing instead to pull Jon’s head to his chest so he could start combing some of the bigger dirt clumps out of his hair with shaking fingers. “If you were anyone else, I might yell at you asking such an insensitive question, Jon.” When Jon pulled away to frown in confusion, Martin sighed, still so giddy with joy that it almost turned into laughter. “Jonathan Sims, I went to your funeral today! I gave your eulogy! You’ve been gone for two whole months, and everyone thought you were dead because no one can lose the amount of blood and viscera we found on your clothes and still be alive!”

Were it not for the dirt, Martin would’ve said Jon went ghostly pale. “Two months? That can’t be right. I know the Buried messes with your sense of time, but I was just with you! I admit the Buried did manage to get a hold of me when I was cutting the fear entities back down to size so they’d all fit properly but it’s so much thinner now, it was much easier to find my way out.” He frowned. “Don’t you remember?”  
Martin squinted, resting his chin on top of Jon’s head. “It was all mostly feelings for me. I don’t think my brain could really interpret all that was happening, so it just kind of didn’t. Felt like you sort of origami folded the world back into a proper shape. I...I still get night terrors about it.”

He felt Jon tense against his chest. “I’m sorry,” came the voice from the face he couldn’t see. “I didn’t realize...I just wanted to put things the proper way again, I didn’t think about you.”

“Oh for christ’s sake, Jon.” With a gentle push, Martin maneuvered Jon so he could see his face again. “You were saving the world and from what I DO remember, a little insensate at the time as you were channeling a fear god to chop bits off other fear gods. I don’t want you to apologize for not considering my feelings while you saved the world!”

He wasn’t prepared for the fierce determination in Jon’s answering expression, muddled as it was by debris still. “I will ALWAYS consider your feelings, Martin Blackwood.”

Martin snorted, then brushed a finger along the edge of Jon’s face where the extra eyes blinked up at him. “So the world is saved, but what about you? What does this mean for you? What do you need to be saved?”

Jon leaned into the touch, squinting those eyes in warm affection. “The Eye left some things behind, but it’s too small to need me to feed it much. Beyond the occasional documentary or scary novel, I won’t need to consume more than maybe that lovely shepherd’s pie you made while we were in the safehouse in Scotland.

A relief for a fear he didn’t realize he had been feeling washed over Martin, and he leaned down to press his forehead to Jon’s. “Well, I may be able to keep you well and sated then. And we may even be able to mix it up and have something besides shepherd’s pie sometimes!”

Jon answered with a laugh, and then a long exhale through a still dirt encrusted nose. “We better get a move on. I don’t want to miss the reception for my own funeral. It would be a shame to keep the guests waiting.”


End file.
